The city of Carlisle also in 1352 was relieved of taxation to a great extent, because "it is rendered void, and more than usual is depressed, by the mortal pestilence lately raging in those parts." The two remaining counties of England, Durham and Northumberland, were no exceptions to the general mortality. In the former there were some 93 beneficed clergy and in the latter about 72, figures from which, on the usual calculation, may be deduced the numbers of the beneficed clergy who died at this time. In the Durham Cursitor records of this time a glimpse is [p159] afforded of the state of these northern counties. The Halmote courts were similar to the manor courts, and were held by commissioners appointed under the great seal of the Palatinate of Durham, by the Bishop's certificate, to receive surrender of copyhold lands, to settle fines, contentions, and generally to transact the business of the estates. At one of these Halmote courts, held at Houghton on the 14th of July, 1349, it is recorded: "that there is no one who will pay the fine for any land, which is in the lord's hands through fear of the plague. And so all are in the same way of being proclaimed as defaulters until God shall bring some remedy." At another court "all refused their fines on account of the pestilence." In another, after stating the receipts, the record adds: "And not more on account of the poverty and pestilence;" and one tenant "was unwilling to take the land in any other way, since even if he survived the plague, he absolutely refused to pay a fine." There are many similar instances in the records at this period, and in one case it is noted that "a man and his whole family had fled before the dreaded disease."[297] In Northumberland the case of the people was so desperate that in 1353 more than £600, which was owing to the King for taxes for five and twenty parishes named, was allowed to stand over for some months since it was hopeless to press for payment.[298] Of Newcastle the same story is told. "It has been shown us," writes the King, "in a serious complaint by the men of Newcastle-on-Tyne, that, since very many merchants and other rich people who were wont to pay the greater part of the tenth, fifteenth, and other burdens of the town, have died in the deadly pestilence lately raging in the town, and since the population remaining alive, who were wont to live by their trading, are by the said pestilence and other adverse causes in this time of war, [p160] so impoverished that they hardly possess sufficient to live upon,"[299] they cannot now pay what is due.